Category: Readalong

This continues the Readalong by Erik van Mechelen of Jane McGonigal’s ‘Reality is Broken’ with insights from Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis framework. For in-depth discussions of this book and others, join Octalysis Prime.

tl;dr Use collaboration, creation, and contribution to create alternate reality games to create new real-world communities.

Summary

McGonigal explores how alternate reality games can create new real-world communities by looking into Comfort of Strangers (helping people learn how to offer and receive comfort), Ghosts of Chance (a game to reinvent membership), and Bounce (a game to bridge the generation gap between people).

Analysis

The most interesting part of this chapter for me are the consistent drives inherent to making each of these games work.

I really like McGonigal’s attention to overriding themes in each of these games, primarily collaboration, creation, and contribution. She wants to help people imagine how behavior design can impact our real world spaces and interactions and relationships.

What do you think?

Which real-world communities could benefit from additional intrinsic motivational design?

This continues the Readalong by Erik van Mechelen of Jane McGonigal’s ‘Reality is Broken’ with insights from Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis framework. For in-depth discussions of this book and others, join Octalysis Prime.

tl;dr Games that add value to life are worth creating.

Summary

In this chapter, McGonigal introduces us to games that accompany real life activities, explaining how their inclusion of intrinsic motivation alleviates boredom (JetSetter), stems anxiety (Day in the Clouds), makes us run harder (Nike+), and hang out with friends more in new places (Foursquare).

It is a great survey of the underlying studies and behavioral psychology.

Analysis

The examples in this chapter won’t surprise anyone reading in 2017, but I was drawn into a reflection on Foursquare, a popular app that is no longer high on the App Store charts.

McGonigal rightly points out that instead of instead of a game that rewards you for what you’re already doing, like Nike+, Foursquare “it’s a game that rewards you for doing new things, and making a better effort to be social.”

Designers will notice a problem here, however. Once I ‘rediscover’ (if I ever forgot) that hanging out with friends is a fun and healthy activity, I can stop using the app. If I take this undesired action (for Foursquare), all I lose is a digital ‘Mayorship’, which, unless you are someone who gets really attached to things that don’t exist, is easy to give let go.

Creating Endgames is one of the most challenging elements of behavior design in any experience.

This continues the Readalong by Erik van Mechelen of Jane McGonigal’s ‘Reality is Broken’ with insights from Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis framework. For in-depth discussions of this book and others, join Octalysis Prime.

tl;dr Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) [not to be confused with Augmented Reality AR], are games designed to be played in the real world, which make difficult activities more rewarding, build up new real-world communities, and help us adopt the daily habits of the world’s happiest people in our own everyday lives.

Summary

McGonigal moves into the promising area of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), with great examples like Chore Wars, Quest to Learn, and SuperBetter, which helped her recover from a traumatic brain injury.

Different to standard games, ARGs offer the opportunity to make real differences in the real world, in real lives.

Analysis

McGonigal’s opening anecdote made me smile:

And it just so happens that ridding our real-world kingdom of toilet stains is worth more experience points, or XP, than any other chore in the Land of the 41st-Floor Ninjas.

McGonigal once again shows how immersed she has been in testing and creating all sorts of games throughout her life.

McGonigal moves into the depths of Chore Wars with anecdotes from other users around the world. Basically, Chore Wars brings out competitive spirit and collaboration with a steady does of accomplishment.

What’s more, Chore Wars is “a game that you win even if you lose. Kiyash has the satisfaction of being the best ninja on the forty-first floor, and I have the pleasure of doing fewer chores than my husband–at least until my competitive spirit kicks back in. Not to mention, it’s more enjoyable to be partners in crime when it comes to housework, instead of nagging each other about chores.

Fix #7: Wholehearted Participation

Compared with games, reality is hard to get into. Games motivate us to participate more fully in whatever we’re doing.

McGonigal reminds us that “to participate wholeheartedly in something means to be self-motivated and self-directed, intensely interested and genuinely enthusiastic.

If we’re forced to do something, or if we do it halfheartedly, we’re not really participating.

If we don’t care how it all turns out, we’re not really participating.

If we’re passively waiting it out, we’re not really participating.

Along with other ARG designers one day on Twitter, McGonigal came upon another definition capturing the spirit of ARGs: alternate realities are the antiescapist game.

This is a cool way to think of them. Instead of retreating to games, we are bringing the best of design and experience design and motivation and mechanics to real-world situations.

Quest to Learn is the next big example, which combines various game mechanics and techniques and overall design into the classroom. This isn’t Khan Academy or Montesorri, but some mix of characteristics that make learning engaging for students with the right amount of challenge, encouraging them through missions, quests, and collaborative exploration and problem-solving.

I might Katie Salen, author of Rules of Play and researcher of how kids learn by playing games, at a discussion at Target in 2012. She led the Quest to Learn curriculum design.

Quest to Learn, in effect, is the precursor to ClassDojo and other gameful design (including digital systems) in the classroom.

SuperBetter was the game McGonigal designed to help herself battle and defeat a traumatic brain injury.

Either I’m going to kill myself or I’m going to turn this into a game.

SuperBetter’s story is well-known, but it centers on turning recovery into a multiplayer experience in 5 steps:

Create your SuperBetter secret identity

Recruit your allies

Find the bad guys

Identify your power-ups

Create your superhero to-do list

By baking cookies for neighbors and many other tasks, McGonigal “suffered a great deal less during the recovery as a direct result of the game.”

Next, McGonigal moves into a recap of types of ARGs discussed in the chapter.

Life-management ARG: like Chore Wars

Organizational ARG: like Quest to Learn

Concept ARG: Like SuperBetter

They are also live event ARGs which gather players at physical locations and narrative ARGs which use multimedia storytelling (like McGonigal’s New York Public Library game, combining both).

Finally, McGonigal’s reminder of the critical essay, “Creating the Play Community” by Bernie DeKoven in The New Games Book is a reminder of her design ethos.

I’ve read McGonigal’s 500-page thesis about performative play, and it is a useful viewpoint because it brings a different lens than most game designers and experience designers currently in the business.

What do you think?

Have you played any Alternate Reality Games? (Does Pokemon Go count? Maybe. It is definitely an augmented reality game that gets you walking around and talking to people in the real world, so sure!)

What do you think? What Alternate Reality Game should we create together?

This continues the Readalong by Erik van Mechelen of Jane McGonigal’s ‘Reality is Broken’ with insights from Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis framework. For in-depth discussions of this book and others, join Octalysis Prime.

tl;dr The key to happiness is reducing a focus on oneself and investing effort and attention into something larger than oneself, something of epic proportions, something that gives you awe.

Summary

McGonigal’s narrative of Halo’s rise and incorporation of epic meaning from its player base and community-driven goals of 10 billion kills against the Covenant (a fictional enemy to Earth) provides the backdrop for her suggestion that the key to happiness is an investment in something with epic meaning, something that gives one awe in its pursuit.

This continues the Readalong by Erik van Mechelen of Jane McGonigal’s ‘Reality is Broken’ with insights from Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis framework. For in-depth discussions of this book and others, join Octalysis Prime.

tl;dr Gamers aren’t gaming alone.

Summary

Stronger social connectivity was first ballooned by Facebook games like Lexulous, then Farmville, which combined Lexulous’s ease of gameplay and social connectivity with the blissful productivity of World of Warcraft.

According to Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of bliss:

Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors….Happiness is not a noun or verb. It’s a conjunction. Connective tissue.

Social Influence and Relatedness is the fifth core drive within my Gamification Framework Octalysis, which is related to activities inspired by what other people think, do, or say. This Core Drive is the engine behind themes like mentorship, competition, envy, group quests, social treasures and companionship.

This Core Drive also includes the “Relatedness” part, which deals with things like attachment to emotional associations and the feeling of nostalgia. For instance, if you see a product that reminds you of your childhood, you have a higher chance of buying that product. Similarly if you meet someone from your hometown, you would also be more inclined to sign up a deal with this person.